Children & Youth Ministries
CYM Videos
Book Review
Together with God
‘Together with God’ is an introduction to family worship that features 15 stories of how families worship and pray together at home. It’s designed for parents and carers looking to create family worship experiences at home.
The book helpfully dispels notions that there is ‘only one way’ to worship and presents a host of different approaches that families use to grow in faith together. It contains plenty of valuable tips and suggestions, giving everyone something to try. There’s lots to learn from how these families have introduced worship into their busy every day lives.
‘Together with God’ doesn’t shy away from the fact that there can be challenges, but it demonstrates that how there can often be an alternative way to finding something that works. The book is hugely practical and a great resource to nurture faith and spiritual practice at home.
Lent and Easter
Walking with Jesus through Lent and Easter
Designed to help adults and children to prepare for Easter together by entering a ‘visual pilgrimage’ – a spiritual exploration through Lent that culminates with the celebration of Easter.
Each creative and thought-provoking reflection invites adults and children to share the journey at their own level by making a special time in the day to reflect on the Easter story. As we prayerfully join Jesus on a spiritual journey, we may pause a while and consider not only the choices set before Jesus but the choices that we make in life.
The material is ideal for families and church-based children’s groups. The seven weekly themes each unpack different aspects of Jesus’ ministry, starting with the call to follow him and focusing on key aspects of this teaching, including miracles, parables and mission. Each theme helpfully provides five days’ worth of material until Holy Week is reached, whereupon there is a reflection for each of these special days concluding with Easter Day itself.
Each daily reflection is accompanied by a photocopiable illustration, designed to draw participants deeper into the Lenten journey as they colour in this part of the story. Each illustration then builds into a storyboard frieze that can be hung on the wall or unfolded on the floor, where the gospel story gradually unfolds in a memorable visual drama.
Family Fun for Easter
Word searches… Treasure hunts… Obstacle courses… Cooking… Crafts Family Fun for Easter will help you to share the meaning of Lent and Easter with your children in thirty ‘family moments’, to explore faith in the home, and to have lots of fun together in the process!
The activities are structured to take the family through the season of Lent from Shrove Tuesday to Easter Day, including Mothering Sunday.
Pray and Play through Lent
Play is nature’s way of extending a child’s horizons and understanding of life. Play and Pray through Lent draws on this natural sense of playfulness and creativity to enable children to grow spiritually by linking the world of the child with the great Lenten themes of the Church.
Based on the Revised Common Lectionary, the book suggests ways in which children can engage with the story of Easter during the six weeks of Lent in a creative way. This is achieved using very simple visual items, such as a story cloth and card figures, to give an ongoing focus.
Family Ministries Research Project
Our family ministries research project is now complete and we are able to report its findings.
Exploring the way churches work with families has been an important project for us as we try to identify the range of practices occurring in the field across Great Britain.
Our aim has been to better understand:
- who engages in family ministry
- the type of activity this involves
- the availability of training and resources.
For more information, please download and read the following documents:
Core Skills for Family Ministry
Core Skills for Family Ministry is a new user-friendly modular training course for children’s and family work practitioners. It is an interdenominational modular scheme offering foundational training for all those involved with church-based family ministry.
It offers six stand-alone sessions on:
- Biblical, historical and contemporary understanding of family
- Family ministry today
- Seasons of family life
- Role of family relationships
- Family well-being and wholeness
- Faith in families
Each module is creative, thought-provoking, interactive and designed to inspire and refresh children’s and family workers at all levels of expertise and experience.
Order here: http://www.brfonline.org.uk/9780857464316/
